Coconut Oil

by Sonal Champsee

“Your Ammaji is coming tonight,” said Mom. “Your grandmother.” She’d been counting down the days for me.

I was excited because I’d learned all about grandmothers in school. We were doing a unit on family trees. I had a green, construction paper tree—the trunk split into two branches, and then each branch split into two more. Eight branches. In the middle, where everything came together, was me. I was happy there was no room for my brother Amit on this tree. It was mine and mine alone.

We were supposed to put pictures of ourselves and then our parents and our […]